


One Two Three

by Confused_Foam



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Mentioned Kozume Kenma, Minor Injuries, Nekoma Week 2019, Relationship Study, Swearing, Team Bonding, just a touch of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 16:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17584088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Confused_Foam/pseuds/Confused_Foam
Summary: Three boys start as strangers, become teammates, and just might end up being friends.





	One Two Three

Nobuyuki had come up with a good few ideas about what his high school teammates would be like, sitting in his grandfather’s tv room drinking tea. Nobuyuki had though up dream teams with super talented players while his grandfather teased him with tales of bossy senpai and coaches who are mean right down to their very bones. It was a fun game to play for hours on end, or at least until his parents came to pick him up and he had to go home and actually think about his future teammates all alone. 

None of their many hypotheticals could have prepared him for the reality of the Nekoma High School Men’s Volleyball Club. They were really something else entirely. They were really something else entirely. Just about the only thing they had gotten right was the bossy senpai. Especially the second years. His fellow first years were a whole nother story. He had never seen two people bicker so consistently before. They got one like cats and dogs as his grandmother would say but really they reminded him more of the cats his grandmothers keeps. One keeps to the top floor, and the other to the first, and they can be found in disagreements on the steps fairly regularly. They are both perfectly nice cats in their own right, but they don’t get along at all. They resemblance to Kuroo and Yaku is almost uncanny. 

At first he had been convinced they must be the biggest jerks on the planet to keep carrying on like they did no matter where they were or who told them to stop. All through practice and after, during lunch breaks, before the morning bell rang, they argued over the pettiest things imaginable. Nobuyuki had once listened to a three day long debate on whether .05mm or .07mm mechanical pencils are better. In that case he had actually agreed with Kuroo that .05mm broke way too easily, but by then he had learned better than to pick sides. It just made whoever he was disagreeing with huffy. 

They were some interesting guys. 

Neither one of them were quite he had expected them to be when he was looking at them in line out of the corner of his eye on the first day of practice. Yaku had looking so...nice. Approachable, and like someone who his grandfather would call a respectable young man. Kuroo on the other hand, looked like someone his mother would have been worried about him talking to. Neither impression could have have been more wrong. Yaku was cranky, and not afraid to dig into anyone who annoyed him with knuckles, shoes, or whatever he could reach them with at time time. The first time he had totally laid Kuroo out on the floor for an off-hand short joke even Nekomata-sensei couldn’t help his surprised laugh. Kuroo was a little bit of the trouble his whole look promised, with his talent for finding buttons and pushing them, but not to far below the surface he was just a giant, lanky, cheesy, nerd. 

Truly some very interesting guys. Definitely took some getting used too, but they worked well on the things that counted. It had only been a few months but Nobuyuki could comfortably say he was glad to have chosen to go to Nekoma.

___________  
As per usual, once Tetsurou had found a comfortable, happy rhythm in life, the universe saw fit to knock it down as easily as a row of dominos. Realistically he knew that no all-powerful being held malicious intent specifically for him, but it was a hard notion to shake as his comfortable nook got turned over yet again. It was simply the nature of the world. Third years graduate and new first years start.

Tetsurou had a whole year to prepare for what should have been an obvious eventuality. He knew that last year’s second years were the type to go on a major power trip the second they found themselves with someone to boss around; he also knew that Kenma and who knows what other kinds of first years would be joining the team. He knew all of that and had a year to begin to deal with it and yet, he did nothing to prepare for the oncoming disaster. Instead of taking advantage of his time he wasted it talking about stupid tv shows with Kai and having great arguments with Yaku. It was a great year, and from their first practice of their second year he regretted it. He was unprepared for just how power-high they new third years would be. 

It was less than two weeks before Kenma told him on the track bleachers that he wanted to quit. 

Guilt sat heavily on him, in addition to the need to find a plan to step it the fuck up. So heavily in fact, that he sat straight, through the lunch bell going off and the mass classroom shuffle as people switched room to eat with their friends. Tetsurou just sat with his head down in his folded arms, undoubtedly making his hair that much worse. It was the thwack of a book on the back of his head that brought him to attention. Yaku and Kai stood over him, looking annoyed and concerned respectively. He blew off their worry, reducing his own to simply be over team moral.

Tetsurou was so deep in his own need to be a barrier between his upper and underclassmen that he lost track of what his actual classmates were up to for a few days. When he finally took the time to catch up with them he was rather surprised at what he noticed. Without him even saying anything, they and joined his cause. 

Kai was being a solid and reliable wall in that way of his, not quite injecting himself into situations that had previously ended poorly. More than once Tetsurou saw him silently backing up the first years, standing firmly at their backs, joining in their cleaning, and generally trying to lighten their burdens. 

Perhaps more surprising was Yaku, someone Tetsurou would have hardly called a comforting soul at any point in the months he had know him. Suddenly he was handing out too-hard pats on the back and grins whenever one of the first years started to wilt. He was staying late to train their receives, and being not-unkindly stern, the picture of a grumbly but kind senpai. 

Kenma stopped talking about seriously quitting the team, and the mood of the team in general seemed higher after just a few weeks. 

When Tetsurou tried to thank them as they were walking to the gym from the second year end of the building Yaku just kicked him in the ass and said “No shit, they're our teammates too. You’re not the only one with a heart.” Kai patted him on the shoulder and laughed. 

___________

Spraining his ankle in the middle of that match was probably the scariest moment of Morisuke’s life so far. It shouldn’t have been. He knew he had a good team. No, a damn great team. But as he hit the ground and could just tell something was wrong all he could think about was this being their last game, and it being all his fault. When the whistle blew, and Nekoma stood victorious, he could have run all the way to the top of the Sky Tree and back, ankle be damned. Supported by Kuroo and Kai felt feather light. 

The three of them sat in the gym long after the post-game meeting was over, sitting leaning on the wall next to the storage room and each other. Normally the gym was pretty creep once the lights were out and there was no squeaking of volleyball shoes or shouts, but it wasn't so bad tonight. They sat in the quiet until Morisuke started to fall asleep and finally Kai whispered “We won.”

“Maybe you and I won, Yakkun got to take a comfy seat on the benc- Hey!” Morisuke cut him off with a jab between his ribs. They all laughed as he rubbed at the new sore spot on his side, and then Kuroo flung his arm across Morisuke’s shoulders. “But you know Yakkun, you better get that ankle fixed quickly. We’ve got a lot more volleyball to play before we’re done.”

Something about that caught funny in Morisuke’s throat, but he sounded only a little funny while he countered with a joke. Mercifully, neither Kai or Kuroo commented. Instead they just passed little jokes until the rumbling stomachs and chiming phones told them it was time to go home. Kai had to go in the opposite direction almost immediately to go catch a bus, but Kuroo half-dragged him to the train station and even the few blocks out of the way to get him home safe. Kuroo’s shitty tallness made him a pretty terrible crutch, and the whole thing a fairly awkward experience for the both of them, but Kuroo insisted it was “all for the good of the team.”

After dinner and his mom finished fussing over him, Morisuke laid in bed with his ankle propped up, holding a book in a mockery of reading. A lot more volleyball to play before we’re done. That’s what Kuroo had said, but Morisuke didn’t think it would be nearly enough. His phone went off with that annoying meow Kuroo had sent their group chat alert to be after stealing his phone one afternoon, and his stomach turned a little. Yeah. He wasn’t even a little ready to stop playing volleyball with those guys, to not see them every afternoon. Nationals loomed like a ticking time bomb on the horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> I hoped you liked it! I think all the third years have lovey friendships, so while Nekoma Week was on I wanted to give the relationship between these three time to shine. 
> 
> So yeah! This was written for Nekoma Week Day One (First Year|Second Year|Third Year) You can find more about Nekoma Week @NekomaWeek on twit  
> and you can find ME on twit @confused_foam I promise I'm super friendly and love to talk!
> 
> Kudos and comments actually fuel my entire being


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